LA Weekly

Santa Monica has been thinking seriously about global warming since at least 1994, when it adopted its first Sustainable City Plan. [Craig] Perkins, [the city's director of environmental management], explains that there are three core elements to the greenhouse-gas reduction strategy: cutting down on energy consumption, improving energy efficiency and generating power from renewable sources. Six years ago, on Perkins’ advice, the City Council decided that all the city’s electricity would come from what is known as “green power.” At the time it was still possible to opt out of the big suppliers like San Diego Gas & Electric and Southern California Edison and buy electricity on the open market from smaller providers. Back then, green power was more expensive, but over the past decade, the price of regular power has increased, so the council is now getting a cheaper rate than Los Angeles and other nearby cities, which no longer have the choice of buying on the open market. (That’s another little-known consequence of the state’s disastrous electricity crisis.) According to Perkins, the city of Santa Monica is the largest purchaser of green power in the state and the 17th largest in the nation, which, he notes, “either says a lot about us or is a sorry comment on everyone else.”

Can one city put a dent in global warming? Or is green power just good economics? Read my colleague and friend Margaret Wertheim's story (in the LA Weekly) on Santa Monica's effort to reduce CO2 emissions and cut its energy costs, too. It's good.

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"Caption: Beatrice Ahimbisibwe, Uganda, Ole Petenya Yusuf-Shani, Kenya, and the Lorax, Dr. Seuss character, appeared at a press conference to support agenda item #6, a proposal from Papua New Guinea and others on approaches to reducing emissions from deforestation in developing countries."

I wonder if my favorite Dr. Seuss character can persuade my country, which emits a quarter of the world's greenhouse gases, to cooperate at this week's United Nationa Conference on Climate in Montreal.

You can follow the conference's progress here.

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I'm posting the San Francisco Chronicle version of Michelle Nijhuis' tragically beautiful and mind-bending story about the impact of climate change on the critters of Yosemite only because the longer High Country News version requires a subscription. But I highly recommend getting the HCN subscription (30 days free!) just to read the whole piece, in which she compares the findings of a early 20th-century researcher, Joseph Grinnell, with the research of a modern-day team led by Berkeley professor James Patton (who uses the same techniques and tools as Grinnell did -- a process Nijhuis describes beautifully):

On the east side of the Sierra, Grinnell and his assistants only saw piñon mice below 7,000 feet, a finding confirmed by other researchers throughout the central part of the range. Patton's group found numerous mice frolicking in the talus slopes of Lyell Canyon, 10,200 feet above sea level and about eight miles from the nearest Grinnell sighting. The distance was too great to be the work of just a few wandering individuals; it was clear to Patton that the range of the piñon mouse, and its habitat, were far different now than in 1915.

Some rodents have moved up; others breed earlier; some have disappeared. It's a fascinating story, and elegantly written.

All this, and yet "the U.S. is determined to undermine the Montreal conference" on climate change, according to this article in the Toronto Star.

Speaking of the warming planet, if you live in Los Angeles, don't forget about Friday's event with Jared Diamond and Peter Sellars at the Natural History Musuem. Details here. It's epic.

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Southern California Edison said it could replace San Onofre's cracking steam generators for $680 million. The California Public Utilities Commission said all right, go ahead, but an administrative law judge for the commission said stick to that figure, and imposed a spending cap. So SCE has decided not to do it. Which means the plant shuts down in 2012. Writes J.A. Savage in the California Energy Circuit:

In a detailed response to the CPUC's proposed decision filed November 21, Edison argued that the decision's cost cap of $680 million "unreasonably limits SCE's recovery of reasonable costs incurred to meet its obligation to serve customers." The utility also calls the cost cap an "unprecedented and unreasonable penalty.

Does SCE mean it? Or, as one source in the story suggests, is the letter a bluff?

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From the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

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My endangered species story is up here. There's a Web only sidebar, too; link's at the end.

Have a Happy Thanksgiving. (Only 25 people saw that link last year. So I'm recycling.)

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They're now saying it will open in a little over a month. But apparently some people still think it's a hoax, or it wouldn't be featured here.

(About the title: I used to have a friend from Sarajevo who, when exiting a bad Hollywood movie, would say, "Why the movie?")

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I don't believe in fuel cells for portable power. I think it's a dumb idea. The good news is: they burn hydrogen with oxygen to produce electricity, and only water vapor is the byproduct. The bad news is: you have to deal with molecular hydrogen gas, and that's what's stymieing the research and in my opinion is always going to stymie the research.

Kevin Bullis of Technology Review interrogates MIT's Donald Sadoway on why he thinks lithium batteries will kick hydrogen's butt. It contains a slightly egg-heady explanation of what we need to make hydrogen (and fuel cells -- platinum at $500 an ounce; lithium's only $40 a pound), but it's the clearest explanation I've read so far about why hydrogen isn't happening. And probably won't.

Sadoway also waxes eloquent about the joys of driving an all-electric, super-quiet car. It's a beautifully geeky interview, and it gave me hope. (HT: A fellow villager in the AEZ.)

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"I find the extension of the time frame for the Yucca Mountain rules to 1 million years to be absolutely preposterous," wrote Frank A. Albini, a retired research professor of mechanical engineering at Montana State University, Bozeman.

"The rules should apply no longer than the current life of the nation, about 200 years. By then, the people of the U.S., if such still exists, will probably not even be able to read, much less interpret, the rules. This is silliness in the extreme."

Public comments on the Yucca Mountain standards, from the Las Vegas Sun (via Greenwire).

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I had an interesting conversation today with Brian Kennedy, a spokesman for the House Committee on Resources, who politely answered all my questions about Pombo's Threatened and Endangered Species Recovery Act (which we both called "TESRA"). I wanted to know what his office had to say about the charge, made by former Congressman Pete McCloskey for one, that Pombo's plan to reimburse property owners for endangered species-related future losses would bankrupt the federal government. I could use little of the interview in the story I wrote, so I'm posting slightly more of it here:

The way it works is that the property owner would be told by the Department of the Interior whether or not an action or activity on his or her property would affect the species. Three things can happen: The secretary can come back and say, 'no would not harm endangered species, so have at it.' The second is that the secretary can come back and say 'well, potentially it could harm a species, so we’re going to work with you, the property owner, and give you some hands-on assistance and conservation grants to do what you need to do on your property.'

As the very backend last-ditch resort, they come back and say 'you cannot do what you’re thinking of doing, period, because it wil harm this species.' In other words you cannot use your land, period. At that point, because it would constitute a taking, there would be a trigger whereby the landower went into negotiations wih the Department of Interior and outside independent appraisers to determine what the value of that property should be.

As they talk about this, they say this is a giveaway and it’s going to bankrupt the federal government. But you have to understand that everything comes down to zoning. [I can't come out and say] I was going to put up a skyscrper here, but I can't because of an endangered species, so pay me for what I would have made putting up this skyscraper. I'm not zoned for a skyscraper. So I have no loss or no claim under this legislation.

[The money for compensation will come from the Department of the Interior], about $10 million [through 2007 or 2008]. People say, well, that’s not a lot of money! So does that mean that every year the federal government takes $10 million worth of private property without paying for it? Because clearly, that's not good.

I also asked him how this private-property focus squared with the reality that much of the land Pombo's worried about -- such as the whole of Central California -- is irrigated with expensive state and federal projects paid for by our tax dollars. Without those projects, that private land would be worthless. He didn't really have an answer, except to say that Pombo's solution would eliminate the "shoot, shovel and shut up" tactic some property owners have resorted to when an endangered species turns up on their land.

Kieran Suckling, the executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity, however, did have something to say about it:

When industry gets massive subsidies from the federal government, they love sucking on the federal tit, but when there are any regulations to guide the use of those subsidies they scream bloody murder. But if you’re going to spend our government subsidies we want you to do it in a way that doesn’t destroy the environment.

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Friday, December 2, from 7:00 p.m. to 1:00 a.m (yes, you read it right), the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County presents "Different Lands, Global Issues" with Pulitzer Prize-winning, pro-nuclear, corporate friendly author Jared Diamond in a roundtable discussion with (genius) theater and opera director (most recently of John Adams' Doctor Atomic, which I am desparate to see) Peter Sellars (the link goes to Mark Swed's beautiful piece on Sellars in the Los Angeles Times). They'll be joined by the less famous but no less formidable Pacific Institute co-founder and world water expert Peter Gleick and Australian climate-change and sustainability scholar Dr. John Merson. The four will discuss energy, climate change and ecological survival.

The discussion is conjunction with the museum's "Collapse?" exhibit (they continually have to remind me to keep that question mark on), which I had issues with (related to said question mark -- too much equanimity, even for me). But have I ever looked so forward to an evening's discussion on energy, climate change and ecological survival as I look forward to this? Have I ever looked forward to any discussion on energy, climate change and ecological survival?

No. But this one will rock.

These guys can talk, but not all the way until 1 a.m., so there'll be music later by Kinnara Taiko (loud drums) and Rocky Dawuni (Reggae from Ghana -- in the African Mammals Hall!) and The Rebirth (soul to dance to).
Out-of-towners: You still have time to buy flights seven days in advance.

(Photo credit on Diamond: Max Gerber)

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Since everyone is making such a big deal about 60 Minutes' segment on eco-terrorism -- an episode that played like Sen. James Inhofe's wet dream -- I feel compelled to re-post Sen. Jim Jefford's response last spring to the Senate Environment and Publica Works' Committee, back when the FBI came out and declared environmentalists the country's greatest terrorist threat.

Please read it.

No one here is endorsing violence in the name of the environmentalism and animal rights -- indeed, it hardly ever happens. But this campaign to protray enviros and animal-rights activists as pyromaniacal nutjobs is right-wing property-rights-crazed propaganda, pure and simple. It emerged as an idea almost exactly 10 years after the Oklahoma City bombing, right when Inhofe and his pals knew there would be attention paid to right-wing extremism in, specifically, his state. So he diverted the argument to promote what former Congressman Pete McCloskey, embarrassed about the current state of Republican leadership, calls a "property uber alles" philosophy.

Don't fall for it.

On a related note, the FBI has paid up and apologized for harrassing Josh Connole in connection with the Hummer-arson incident. Here's the story I wrote about it two years ago, when he got arrested.

UPDATE, 11/21: The FBI is reporting that a Maryland fire "could be the work a group of radical environmentalists," according to the Washington Post. These days, you can blame anything on the ELF, which the FBI reportedly considers "one of the country's most dangerous domestic terrorist organizations."

If that's true, we're pretty darn safe.

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Last spring, the Sierra Club and Judicial Watch lost their court battle to get the Bush administration to come clean about industry participation in Cheney's Energy Task Force. Last week, when oil executives came before Congress to defend their record profits, most told New Jersey Sen. Frank Lautenberg that they hadn't been part of it. But today the Washington Post reports that leaked Secret Service documents showed oil execs were admitted to the White House in droves during the task force proceedings -- all of them for meetings with Cheney's aides.

According to the White House document, [Exxon VP James] Rouse met with task force staff members on Feb. 14, 2001. On March 21, they met with Archie Dunham, who was chairman of Conoco. On April 12, according to the document, task force staff members met with Conoco official [Alan] Huffman and two officials from the U.S. Oil and Gas Association, Wayne Gibbens and Alby Modiano.

Someone might still have to prove it matters -- that the meetings somehow determined policy -- as the absence of that proof was pretty much the basis of the D.C. Circuit Courts' dismissal of the case. But as with so many of these matters, the cover-up is enough to shock:

Lautenberg asked the five executives: "Did your company or any representatives of your companies participate in Vice President Cheney's energy task force in 2001?" When there was no response, Lautenberg added: "The meeting . . . "

"No," said Raymond.

"No," said Chevron Chairman David J. O'Reilly.

"We did not, no," Mulva said.

"To be honest, I don't know," said BP America chief executive Ross Pillari, who came to the job in August 2001. "I wasn't here then."

"But your company was here," Lautenberg replied.

"Yes," Pillari said.

Shell Oil president John Hofmeister, who has held his job since earlier this year, answered last. "Not to my knowledge," he said.

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Sir Laurence Olivier was once asked by a reporter how he produced his famous scream in Hamlet. He said he thought about how ermine are trapped in the arctic -- with a frozen salt lick. The animal's tongue sticks to the icy block, and gets stuck there until it dies.

So, anyway: PETA's ongoing campaign against J. Crew is making it more and more difficult for the Fur Commission to sell itself as the green alternative to synthetic fibers.

Don't look at this Web site if you're the sensitive type and prone to nightmares. On the other hand, if you like J. Crew's cheap t-shirts and don't think their decision to re-introduce fur procured from China in their 2006 line is so bad, you might check out a video or two.

The fur people have a point that killing animals for fashion doesn't promote widespread planetary destruction -- although it's not exactly environmentally benign, either, not least because trapping doesn't always nab the intended target. But how do we categorize environmentalism? I'm not sure I know. I'm just sure I can't wear clothes trimmed with the skins of animals caught in traps.But I'm a vegetarian, too. And I eat granola (but I don't wear Birkenstocks -- my feet need more support than that).

I do, however, believe to some extent in the power of the free market, and a robust boycott campaign is part of that wonderful system. So I'm boycotting J. Crew. All the clothes I got from them fell apart, anyway.

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I'm not going to opine as to whether today's rash of tornados -- in November, no less -- is a sign of global warming; there's no hard evidence that it is. But being a childhood tornado survivor myself, I do find it interesting that before 1950, tornado forecasting was at various times either discouraged or banned; "The most important hardware for forecasting at the Storm Prediction Center is the human hand," and the only reason tornadoes don't hit major U.S. metropolitan areas more frequently is that big cities take up so little space relative to the rest of the country.

Check out the Online Tornado FAQ by Roger Edwards.

(I got the old picture of the allegedly first photographed tornado here.)

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"Grizzlies have absolutely no fear of human beings. None at all."

While some grizzlies have become food-conditioned by sloppy campers and people who don't know better (I've met a couple of them), wild bears avoid humans. Further along in the interview with Shogren, the same guy talked about how much "fun" it was to shoot grizzly bears. "It's fun," he said. "That's all I can say. It is fun. You're hunting a large carnivore. You're hunting an animal that can fight back."

So maybe it's better to delist the bears for a while. Maybe all those habituated bears, the kind that steal a dead elk off a man's horse, will get their fear back. If we don't wipe them out first.

UPDATE: This morning the Department of the Interior has announced that it will remove the bears around Yellowstone from endangered species protection after 30 years on the "threatened" list. The region includes parts of Wyoming, Montana and Idaho, where more than 600 grizzlies live. Four other populations in other states remain protected as threatened species. The press release is here.

The Sierra Club has a good fact sheet on why this might be a bad idea: While the population may have recovered admirably, the habitat has not.

The public has 90 days to respond to this decision before it goes into effect. Write to: Grizzly Bear Recovery Coordinator, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, University Hall 309, University of Montana, Missoula, Montana 59812 or, by e-mail at FW6_grizzly_yellowstone@fws.gov before February 15, 2006.

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23 November 1995 -- A German court sentenced Adolph Jaekle, a German businessman, to 51/2 years in prison for smuggling weapons grade plutonium into the country, according to press reports. Investigators made the first in a series of contraband plutonium seizures in Germany when they raided Jaekle's home, in the southern town of Tengen in May, 1994, and found a lead cylinder containing 6.15 grams of plutonium 239. Jaekle had pleaded not guilty to the plutonium charge, arguing that he did not know what the substance was. (From the Washington Post, November 24, 1995.)

The Union of Concerned Scientists today issued a press release condemning the decision in Congress to fund the possible reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel, Included in the FY 06 Energy and Water Appropriations bill is $50 million for DOE to build a demonstration reprocessing plant, with the hopes of bringing one online by 2010.

From the UCS press release:

If the U.S. were to reprocess the roughly 50,000 metric tons of spent fuel that it has generated to date, it would produce about 500 metric tons of separated plutonium, enough for tens of thousands of nuclear weapons and an attractive target for terrorists.

With Yucca Mountain in doubt, reprocessing seems reasonable -- unless you're worried about people like Jaekle, above. Reprocessing creates plustonium, and plutonium, as John McPhee noted in his book from the 1970s, The Curve of Binding Energy, has a way of disappearing in small amounts. And small amounts can cause a lot of trouble. And apparently a lot of plutonium has already gone missing -- if only "on paper."

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"The first thing I noticed is the absence of black smoke when it’s burned indoors."

More from the too-good-to-be-true dept.: I am not endorsing this. And I know there's got to be a downside. But for now, I think I would be remiss if I didn't let whoever comes here know about Butanol -- a fuel that replaces gas with no engine modifications, made from, well, cheese. (Cheese? you ask. Isn't that expensive? Apparently it's waste cheese. Dairies throw tons of it away every so often.) It can also be produced from other waste biomass, such as corn.

The author of this article, Bob Fitrakis, met a guy named David Ramey who drove cross country on it.

Ramey points out that the production of industrial butanol and acetone through the process of fermentation using clostridia acetobutylicum began as early as 1916. Ramey says Chaim Wizemann, a student of Louis Pasteur, isolated the microbe that makes butanol.

It costs $3.75 a gallon right now. It won't cause the clear-cutting of Brazilian rainforests for soy-based buel. And it burns clean:

At the Springfield, Ohio [EPA] test center, butanol reduced smog-producing hydrocarbon emissions by an astounding 95%. Ramey’s own Environmental Energy, Inc. (EEI) puts combined test figures at a still remarkable 25%. EEI claims that butanol also reduces carbon dioxide emissions from gasoline’s 12% to 7%.

The article, on The Free Press, is here. Green Car Congress posted a detailed page on it last July (with a comment from Ramey himself). There's also a Butanol Web site. There's even a Wikipedia page on it.

Here's the problem, as far as I see it. Butanol has been around for a while. So why hasn't it taken off?

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The Watt has an excellent explanation and some pictures of the turbines I mentioned earlier.

It'd be cool to see TMA team up with Native Wind (thanks to WorldChanging for the link), and explore whether energy nirvana is possible. (There's some controversy about the bird factor in WorldChanging's comments on Native Wind.)

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Activists from Global Exchange plan to project 30-foot "light banners" on various publicly visible surfaces in Los Angeles this evening to highlight the dismal fuel economy in Ford's 2006 fleet. Honestly, this came as a surprise to me, because I thought Bill Ford, who prides himself on his enviro-cred, had recently had an epiphany -- hybridize or die -- which he announced at a meeting in September. Now I realize I was inclined to be more optimistic because of an interview with Niel Golightly on Grist in which Ford's "director of sustainable business strategies" announced Ford's plans to tread lightly on the planet in the future. "There's no going back," he said.

You're right to say that there have been highs and lows since we publicly touched the third rail called global warming six years ago, but even when our progress wasn't as visible as some wanted, we were beavering away at new technologies (like hybrids and hydrogen) and new product segments (like cross-over vehicles that blend SUV and car attributes).

"Beavering away"? Okay, well, here's what Global Exchange has to say about it:

"Ford is spending millions of dollars on TV advertisements and PR stunts to try to project an image of itself as an environmental company, so the least we can do is project some truth onto the walls of Ford dealerships," said Michael Hudema, Jumpstart Ford campaigner with Global Exchange. "No amount of TV commercials and sustainability reports can undo the fact that Ford has been ranked last place in fuel economy by the EPA for the last five years straight."

Light banners are also going up in Detroit, and tomorrow has been declared an international "Day of Action" against Ford (headquartered in Los Angeles at Galpin Ford in North Hills -- a pretty long drive for me.) Check out the campaign to keep the pressure on Ford at Jump Start Ford. I really like the picture of the handsome guy with the megaphone holding a cute baby.

Projections in Los Angeles tonight:

5:30 PM near the Airport Marina Ford, 5880 W. Centinela Blvd.

7 PM Buerge Ford, 11800 Santa Monica Blvd, West LA

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“So, the first thing I should do is explain how we measure radiation. We do it in ‘Rems.’ That stands for ‘Roentgen Equivalent Man.’” He stepped back to the overhead projector. “We were talking about how radiation can kill you. So how many Rems does it take?” Tarelli put a slide on the projector, but left the machine off. “The guaranteed answer is six hundred and fifty. If you are exposed to 650 Rems of radiation all at once, you've likely taken a lethal dose. Without the best medical attention and some luck, you'll be dead within a few days.”

Rad Decision is a "techno-thriller about a looming disaster at a nuclear power plant." I'm diggin' it. What a cool way to learn about nukes -- and on a blog, no less. (See comment #4 from the author in the preceding post.)

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The story to which I devoted roughly six months of my life -- not completely, but close -- has hit the stands and the Web. It's here. And the second part is here. Yes, it's long. You can even read the second part first if you want.

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There wasn't much enviro-related stuff happening in the election last night, except for up in Sonoma County, where Measure M, which would have instituted a 10-year moratorium on genetically engineered crops, was done in by a well-funded fear campaign sponsored by big agricultural interests (it went down 56 to 44). The intiative's authors and organizers, GE Free Sonoma, claim victory in educating the public about the dangers of GE food, and there may be hope for some sort of legislative move. Measure M had support from a diverse set of interests, including the Sierra Club, California Certified Organic Farmers, and the Small Boat Commercial Salmon Fishermen's Association.

Mendocino County has already banned GE crops, and the prevalence of genetically modified organisms could have disastrous effects on the region's organic farmers, whose crops are increasingly becoming polluted by wind-borne pollen from GMO-infected crops. . This Wall Street Journal story (free this week!) says it all:

Craig Wedig, a Cuba City, Wis., farmer, blames contaminated seed for the GM crops that appeared on his organic cornfield in 2001. Mr. Wedig, 28 years old, had a contract to sell his crop to a mill making organic corn syrup for export. When the mill detected GMOs in the third and fourth truckload from his farm, he had to sell the corn for less money to a company making livestock feed.

The GMO discovery cost Mr. Wedig $2,250. . . . "My advice to the organic farmers in Europe is to make sure that any GMO drift becomes the legal responsibility of the GM farmer," says Mr. Wedig. "Here, I'm responsible for my neighbor's pollen, and that's not fair."

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Environment and Energy Daily is reporting this afternoon that Former Rep. Pete McCloskey, one of the co-authors of the Endangered Species Act, is recuiting Attorney Mark Connolly to Rich Pombo, congressional shredder and destroyer of habitats, in next year's run for Tracy's seat in the House. McCloskey announced in September that he'd oppose Pombo himself if he could find no one else to do it; the ESA means that much to him. According to the Tracy Press (see link above), "McCloskey said Republicans in Congress had been corrupted by power, and he compared the existence of progressive Republicans like himself to the Ivory Billed Woodpecker. 'They’ve been extinct for 20 years, but there are rumored sightings.'"

Connolly is a slow-growth advocate, but still a Republican. I'm beginning to believe this intra-party revolt is not just some scheme but a genuine groundswell of opposition -- spurred on, at least in part, by disagreements over environmental issues.

E&E requires a subscription, but you can get a two-week trial without a credit card. It's a good ground-level source of news from the Hill.

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Elizabeth Grossman reports in The Nation that Federal Prison Industries, better known as UNICOR, is using prison inmates at Northern California's Atwater facility to break up electronic parts for recycling. The inmates are working without OSHA-approved safety equipment, they aren't being told about the hazards and they're being trained to do the job in a way that increases their exposure to lead, cadmium and other toxic metals.

UNICOR's computer disassembly process releases so much lead, in fact, that its dust qualifies as hazardous waste. Smith and former staff at UNICOR's Elkton, Ohio, facility say this waste has been improperly handled. "Prison staff were removing the filters that collect the dust from the glass-breaking without wearing respirators, and putting these filters in the general prison trash," says Smith, who showed me photographs of worktables covered with thick layers of pale gray dust.

Five years ago, the New York Times ran an article about how inmates are now making "more than license plates," and earning 25 cents to $7 an hour. It's pretty convenient: A built-in workforce that can't organize and strike, can't complain, and has to eat the food in the cafeteria no matter how bad it is. Supporters call this a "flexible and dependable workforce," but:

To opponents, inmate labor is both a potential human rights abuse and a threat to workers outside prison walls. Inmates have no bargaining power and are easily exploited, the critics say. In one California lawsuit, for example, two prisoners have sued both their employer and the prison, saying they were put in solitary confinement after complaining about working conditions.

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(Thanks to the church sign generator for that.)

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Or so they say: Terra Moya Aqua, Inc., of Cheyenne, Wyoming, has developed what they call a “vertical axis” turbine that looks like a tower without the propellers of more common wind turbines. Because of its reduced height and radical design, the company touts it as more efficient, easier to maintain and install, and genuinely bird-friendly:

One of the primary environmental drawbacks of the propeller wind turbines is that they kill birds. The tips of the blades spin much faster than the wind speed, chopping through the air sometimes at speeds of 200 mph. The birds generally just don't see them coming.

The TMA vertical axis design probably "looks like a building to the bird," said Taylor. "We've never seen a dead bird at our test site." Likely this is because birds don’t normally fly into solid walls.

He notes that his company has been able to secure permission to install their turbine in several California counties where propeller turbines are banned because of the known bird carnage.

They also say it’s “six to eight times” as efficient as other turbines, lowering the cost per kilowatt hour of energy generation.

Design creates pull on the back side, contributing to 40%+ wind conversion efficiencies; doesn't kill birds; runs more quietly; and doesn't need to be installed as high, blending better with landscape. Generating costs estimated at 3.5 cents per kilowatt-hour, surpassing conventional energy sources.

It’s starting to sound like a Ronco product on late-night TV. But maybe it’s true.

(This is also on /. here, where some of the news nerds don’t seem to believe birds die in turbines at all.)

UPDATE: The After Gutenberg blog has this good link on Savonius and other vertical-axis turbines versus horizontal axis turbines -- a little technical, but not beyond comprehension. It gets into "lift-based" and "drag-based" technology, which makes the whole thing a little easier to understand.

It's not too good to be true just yet . . .

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Several news organizations are reporting tonight that House and Senate negotiators hammering out details on a bill to fund energy and water projects cut Yucca Mountain's budget down to $450 million -- $200 million less than Bush wanted and more than $100 million less than YMP got last year. The bill diverts $50 million of that to promoting the recycling of nuclear fuel (which according to some is no less an environmental nightmare).

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Some wacky energy ideas (black light energy and fusion) courtesy of my compatriots in the Alternative Energy Zone at Burning Man. I don't know quite what to think of them, except to imagine what the world would be like if their inventors' dreams really came true. What would free energy do to our economy and our landscape? Would it all necessarily be better?

On a similar note, the Salt Lake City Weekly ran an intriguing article, equal parts lurid and geeky, on cold fusion a few weeks ago:

Forced underground, cold fusion has since become a cult, complete with its own cheerleaders, magazines, hats and coffee mugs, along with a regular academic conference to which few but the cold fusionists themselves pay any attention. Some cold-fusion researchers have become conspiracy buffs, sure that Dick Cheney and big oil are thwarting their efforts. One current story alleges that fossil-fuel forces killed off cold fusion’s greatest champion, Infinite Energy magazine editor Eugene Mallove, who was murdered last year during an apparent robbery

That's just one of many good parts.

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The U.S. Geological Survey reports that Hurricanes Katrina and Rita "transformed some 100 square miles of marsh to open water in southeastern Louisiana," This had already been happening fast, thanks to a number of disruptions to the natural landscape, including oil-industry dredging and the taming of the Mississippi (as described in Mike Tidwell's Bayou Farewell, which I just finished reading and highly recommend).

Here's a great map that really brings home the damage to those essential wildlife habitats and fishing grounds, which also protect the land against storm surges and floods.

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The EPA's annual Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) has long been a way for communities to assess pollution threats in their midst. This year TRI detailed emissions at the Chevron refinery in El Segundo, which spews more bad air than any other facility in Southern California. I recently used the data to establish that uranium enrichment facilities in Paducah, Kentucky and Portsmouth, Ohio release 10 times the chlorofluorocarbons than all other sources in the U.S. combined. That's the very same CFC-114 banned under the Montreal Protocol because it eats into the ozone layer, which sort of makes it more difficult to argue that nuclear power is the green energy solution.

But now, in keeping with the apparent trend to deny ever more data to the public (recall the struggle and FOIA requests required to get the EPA to fork over data about New Orleans floodwater post-Katrina), the EPA wants to scale back TRI reporting, limiting it to an every-other-year report and allowing polluters to release 10 times more toxins before reporting their deeds.

Robert McClure's story in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer ("Critics rip plan to relax chemical release rules"), comes complete with take-action advice, which says to me that there's little debate over whether this is a bad, bad thing. Writes McClure:

Congress ordered the annual reports in the wake of a 1984 accident at a Union Carbide factory in Bhopal, India, that released a poisonous gas, killing thousands. Many Bhopal residents didn't even know the pesticide was being made in their midst.

Since the pollution reports were required in 1987, waste dumping by American firms has plummeted. Industry, government and environmentalists agree that it prompted corporate executives to institutionalize waste-cutting programs that, in the long run, saved many companies money by preserving valuable byproducts that once were wasted.

There's also a detailed story in Chemical and Engineering News puzzling over the change (it comes just a few years after a White House regulatory official called for the data to be released faster, as its value is timeliness), and the EPA's own fact sheet on the change is http://www.epa.gov/tri/tridata/modrule/phase2/Fact_Sheet.pdf">here.

Take action here -- OMB Watch, which has an even more alarming take on the TRI rollback, makes it easy for you.

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